Free Republic

Let's try for a moment to read the mind of an Al-Qaeda operative in the remote mountains of Waziristan as he listens to the news on the radio. His worldview has been roiled recently by two events - one confounding his image of the West and the other confirming it. The upsetting news for our imaginary jihadist is the election of Barack Obama as president of the United States. This wasn't supposed to happen, in Al-Qaeda's playbook. Their aim was to draw the "far enemy" (meaning America) ever deeper onto the battlefields of Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan. Instead, the jihadists...

With all trends running against them, Republicans' only hope is to reinvent themselves as pragmatists. That, or nominate Sarah Palin and go out in a blaze of glory. Surveying the wreckage after American voters gave their party the bum's rush, Republican thinkers have pondered what went wrong, searched their souls -- and decided that the way to regain power is to move further to the right. In postmortem conferences and symposiums, in right-wing journals and Web sites, on Fox News, the overwhelming consensus among Republican analysts is that the only thing wrong with conservatism is that it isn't conservative enough....

They had a long run. Rush and Malkin and Lucianne and Drudge and Free Republic and those Littlle Green Footballs. But it's over. The Obama Presidency will produce untold millions for these guys because frustration and hate is something you can take to the bank -- but with no branch of government under their control, they have been rendered powerless. Who will pay attention when some irrelevant rightist hack like Eric Cantor (R-VA) or Michelle Bachmann (R-MN) rushes to the House floor to cite a Michael Savage diatribe? Nobody. A great part of the Right's strength was the belief --...

For several years, I've been writing about Bushenfreude, the phenomenon of angry yuppies—who've hugely benefited from President Bush's tax cuts—funding angry, populist Democratic campaigns. I've theorized that people who work in financial services and related fields have become so outraged and alienated by the incompetence, crass social conservatism, and repeated insults to the nation's intelligence, of the Bush-era Republican Party, that they're voting with their hearts and heads instead of their wallets. Last week's election was perhaps Bushenfreude's grandest day. As the campaign entered its final weeks, Barack Obama, who pledged to unite the country, singled out one group of...

TACKY: NY TIMES Alters Headline Over Bush Obama Meeting.... Follow the link from Drudge. The NY Times headline as listed in google cache reads "Obama Will Visit Bush, Watching Out for Tacks on Chairs in Oval Office." When you get to the NT Times sight the articles title reads "As the Handoff Begins, a Visit Both Historic and Perhaps Awkward." What kind of juveniles are running the NY Times? Do they really wonder why half the public of this country thinks this paper is bias and in the tank?

The Republicans were beat BADLY, and now they will spend the next few years licking their wounds while trying to figure out how a far-left radical named Barack Obama could beat an experienced and well respected national hero like John McCain. My personal opinion is that “the fix was in” the moment he was put on the ticket, and the “forces that be” within the United States put together a political machine that not only broke the rules, but crossed ethical and morals lines which shouldn’t have been crossed. Never before have I seen a politician and his supporters go...

Obama's defeat of the heir apparent in his own party and his victory over the much-vaunted Republican machine is a remarkable achievement that owes a lot to his instinct for marketing When the book is written on this election, it should not be titled "The Making of a President," but "The Marketing of a President." Barack Obama's campaign is a case study in marketing excellence. True, it was always going to be a Democratic year. An unpopular war, an incumbent Republican president with rock bottom approval ratings, and many Republican incumbents retiring from Congress as a result all meant that...

Did anyone else watch the LAW & ORDER episode on Wednesday night? I managed to catch last 30 minutes of it. Jason is accused of stoning his mother to death because she was having an affair. He is a student of a pastor who runs a Christian camp for children. DA people play a videotape of the pastor's sermon...The pastor tells the children that we are in a "war" with Islamic fanatics. He speaks out against "hypocrites". Prosecutors shake their heads...The deputy prosecutor states that one doesn't have to go to Middle East to find a school for extremists. Jason...

NEARLY half the British think that religion is harmful, according to a poll carried out by YouGov. Yet more than half also believe in God “or something”. The YouGov poll commissioned by John Humphrys, the broadcaster and writer, found that 42% of the 2,200 people taking part considered religion had a harmful effect. “One reason might be the publicity attracted by a handful of mad mullahs and their hate-filled rhetoric,” writes Humphrys in his new book, In God We Doubt, an extract of which appears in today’s Sunday Times News Review. Only 16% of those polled called themselves atheists; 28%...

It's the middle of harvest season for California raisin grapes, and only half of the farmworkers needed are in the fields. What holds for raisin grapes is happening widely in California agriculture. In the Central Valley alone, there is a shortage of from 70,000 to 80,000 workers to bring fresh fruits, nuts and vegetables to market, according to an estimate by the trade association Western Growers. Some growers are planting fewer acres than normal as they scramble to save the season. Western Growers is worried that the lack of workers -- mostly immigrants from Mexico and Central America -- could...